


Like Soldiers in the Field

by DesMotsComme_Violence (TheFire_in_the_NightSky)



Series: A Love Like Blood [2]
Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Bloody Sunday (1920), Canon-Typical Violence, Do not post to another site, Dubious Morality, Historical References, Jonny & Geoffrey Forever Arguing Like An Old Married Couple With Issues, M/M, Mental Instability, Minor Character Death, Sexual Content, Tragic Romance, Unconventional Relationship, Unreliable Narrator Jonathan Reid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:42:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26113600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFire_in_the_NightSky/pseuds/DesMotsComme_Violence
Summary: In late November of 1920, with the dire backdrop of Bloody Sunday, Geoffrey and Jonathan wage their own small war.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum & Jonathan Reid, Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Series: A Love Like Blood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847077
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	1. Part I: New Old City

**Author's Note:**

> As this is a continuation of _Have You Ever Seen Blood in the Moonlight?_ some things, mainly the relationship I've crafted for Jonathan and Geoffrey, may be better understood having read that first. Also, if you have in fact read that, I want to warn that this piece was originally supposed to be part of that, but I held off because the tone, in my opinion, is quite different. This work is much more brutal, I suppose.
> 
> That being said, this is a work that is, as the summary states, set to the backdrop of an Ireland at war, and does reference the tragic events of Bloody Sunday in Dublin. I do not go into detail, but the resulting death and injuries are mentioned. There is also injury (unrelated to that event) that is perhaps more graphically detailed than my previous work in this series. I'm not explicit for the sake of shock value, but if you are someone rather sensitive or squeamish to these things, it's best to skip this one. No hard feelings, honest.<3
> 
> Listened to ["God Be With You" by The Cranberries](https://open.spotify.com/track/0WmBJ3FS1de5ssnqWhG5ba?si=JQtKV6lTS7KaD-VdLVZ96Q) quite a bit for this one.

_Well I knew the time would come  
When I'd have to leave  
Go on,  
Look what they've done to me,  
They've taken my hand  
And it's killing me  
  
Does it have to be so cold in Ireland?_  
_Does it have to be so cold in Ireland, for me?_  
_Are they ready for me?_  
  
_But I'm afraid I'm returning to Ireland_  
_I'm afraid I'm returning to Ireland_  
_I see that there is nothing for me_  
_There is nothing for me_

\- The Cranberries, "So Cold in Ireland"

* * *

The nights in Dublin had been immeasurably tense, since that Sunday. Blood spilled in the afternoon still scented the grass, the dirt, where men and women as well as... children... fell, gunned down. Where Jonathan came to realise he was not so useful in his old, mortal-honed skill anymore.

He and Geoffrey had awoken much too late, by the design of their altered bodies. But they heard the rabble in the streets thereafter. Ran towards the stadium as if they were two young people anxious to watch a game. Tasted the iron and cordite lingering in the cold air. Their vampiric senses had drawn them to the scene like a compass.

They’d pieced together what they could from sideline murmurings. Jonathan thought himself reasonably pulled together enough to question a policeman, but could not be told much beyond the fact that the number of people shot was over twenty, and that he and Geoffrey should clear out. They kept hearing talk of the IRA, and the surname, _Collins._

That had pricked Geoffrey’s ears. Not long after, he seemed to lift information from minds in the nervous silence of milling onlookers surrounding the cordoned off area of Croke Park, and was sent into a panic, a muddled rage. A man ever ready to sprint for the frontlines.

Too late.

What could they have really done if they’d been there when the shots cracked the air?

At that time, it had been perhaps two months since Jonathan last fed. He'd not truly known the urgency of that starvation until he was greeted with the wounded and dying men in an Irish infirmary. Though he tried his best to dress the part since they’d travelled here—at the insistence of his progeny telling him his tailored suits were far too _posh—_ Jonathan still received withering glances when he had opened his mouth to explain in a rush, that he was a doctor, and he’d wanted to help where he could.

He wasn’t sure where he’d tossed his coat, his hat, and gloves upon entering the hospital. Jonathan had so missed the clamour; the sound helped to flex and stretch the stiffness out of his muscle memory. Everything else in his mind shut off. He'd unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled his sleeves. One man, with an outer thigh wound, the bullet still buried near bone, had asked Jonathan where he was from. Jonathan’s hands were shoved away upon voicing his answer. He had thought it a peculiar question.

Nostrils flaring as he gave the bullet wound one more look, Jonathan had decided to leave the man’s bedside to find a more willing patient. The taste of blood had hung heavy at the back of Jonathan’s throat, like ozone after a remarkably bad lightning storm. Only, Jonathan had found himself desiring the strike of a bolt.

Men had bumped his shoulders, brushing past him in a hurry. A simple hallway became a maze while Jonathan’s eyesight went a bit blurry. The noise around him came to a clattering halt as Jonathan backed into Geoffrey. He remembered the firm hands on his shoulders—turning him, pushing, directing away from where he was needed.

“No Jackeen’s going to let _you_ peek his insides, Reid.”

“Even if it’s a matter of them living or dying?” Jonathan had bit out, pushing Geoffrey off.

“Some may care, yes. You think I was cut from but one unique cloth of mulishness?”

“And some men aren’t even _conscious._ They need surgery, transfusions. There are gut and femoral wounds that will grow septic or—or cause toxaemia if they are not treated properly. Christ, I heard one doctor speak of a patient who may need amputation from taking bullets to the shoulder. I’ve seen this, Geoffrey—I know this sort of chaos. I can smell it.”

Geoffrey had looked at him earnestly then. He raised a gloved hand towards Jonathan’s face, yet backed away at the last second. “Aye, so can I. I want to be here with my brothers, I do. But I cannot bear to be here. Neither can you. There’s too much of it.” He waved his hand in the air. Jonathan had felt the nettle of Geoffrey’s unintentional provocation burrow deeper beneath his flesh. As if he had not the self-restraint to do what was needed of him. “There is nothing we can do. Just leave it for the doctors here, Jon. Now's not the time.”

_I am a fucking doctor._

“And more than that.” With a downcast look in his eyes, Geoffrey had snugged his cap down tighter and walked away from Jonathan, taking leave of the hospital.

Geoffrey had been right that night. But Jonathan could not bring himself to concede that rationale, nor could he the night after, when he continued feeling sick and bloodthirsty, knowing full well where his hunger could so easily be sated, in the arms of the dying.

They’d argued. Geoffrey had told Jonathan they should have never left London together. He lamented his immortality and the uselessness he felt it brought him when it came to this war in his homeland. And for some reason, Geoffrey had let Jonathan read the pinprick of a thought, perhaps sent it outright: he could not bring himself to kill another human here, and he hadn’t since the man outside the Glen Hotel in Ashford.

Before dawn the next morning, Geoffrey left their pitiful, rented tenement, or so Jonathan had been forced to assume. For in the dark that came after, Jonathan woke up alone for the first time in over a year.

* * *

Selfishly, maybe overly so, Jonathan thought nothing could match the absolute tension in the bare and gossamer-laced room he currently knelt in. Not even that fatal Sunday. Shaking quietly, he was on his knees before the three-legged, dusty wingback, with his shirt balled in one hand, trying desperately to hold in the deep crimson currently leaking from Geoffrey’s abdomen in a steady flow. That was the worst of the injuries, anyway. Geoffrey was one bloody, walking wound when he’d stumbled into the building, calling out into Jonathan’s mind.

Jonathan made it to him quickly enough that they’d not woken anyone in the neighbouring flats, and had not made much mess of the floors.

“You need to feed, this isn't going to close on its own, not soon enough.”

There were orichalcum burns on Jonathan's forearms from where he'd held Geoffrey as they staggered to the door of their flat.

The Guard of Priwen were learning how to kill a Nemrod. And now they knew, with certainty, that their former leader was just that sort of beast.

“Do it then.” Geoffrey’s voice was a mumbled hush. His head lolled from side to side against the worn upholstery of the chair. “I’ll drink from you, then I’ll—I will find someone.” Geoffrey’s eyes blinked heavily.

Geoffrey tried grabbing for Jonathan, but he was much too weak and his palms were raw due to pulling out silver-tipped stakes from his body. He’d still had one in his upper back when he came back to Jonathan, and Jonathan had needed to use the tattered remnants of Geoffrey’s wool jacket to wrap around the stake before pulling it out, lest he receive the burns as well. Full, immediate use of his hands was necessary in saving Geoffrey’s life.

“Hold this here. Pressure, harder.” The minute Jonathan needed to step away from Geoffrey to fetch his kit could be crucial.

He came back, syringe in hand. Jonathan was already down to his undershirt, but he pulled that off as well, in a likely futile attempt to save the mess of extra clean-up and laundering. “Where were they?” Jonathan tried to ignore the quiver in his own voice as he gently pressed the point of the needle into the crook of Geoffrey’s elbow. There was no need for a tourniquet, Geoffrey hardly noticed the serum injection, anyway. Jonathan set the syringe aside, knowing Geoffrey would need more than that. He raised his arm, pumping his fist. Jonathan made a ring with his fingers around his bicep, then turned his head and bit down into his own arm, just hard and deep enough to nick the brachial artery. Thick, bright blood oozed immediately.

“I don’t remember.”

A lie.

Jonathan rushed his arm towards Geoffrey’s mouth. “Take it, quickly.” He licked his lips, shamefully savouring the taste of himself. Geoffrey latched onto the mark where thin ribbons of blood streaked down Jonathan’s arm. At the pressure of suction, the wet of Geoffrey’s probing tongue, and sharp eyeteeth pricking skin, Jonathan sighed, closing his eyes to each sensation. He felt fear being fed back to him.

“You’re going to be fine,” Jonathan whispered, feeling himself weaken slightly. He petted at Geoffrey's hair. “Just keep drinking, until I tell you to stop. You’ll be all right, Geoffrey.” He did not know if he was strong enough for this.

This act, this necessity, this… the potential for loss again.

Jonathan opened his eyes. The rush in his veins became more sluggish, as if his body was going into a defensive mode he’d no control over. Geoffrey’s deep wounds at his chest, shoulder, and leg—where the Priwen guards had driven their stakes to clearly hobble him—began to wink mostly closed. The skin around each wide hole was still an angry, flushed colour. The bruising would probably linger for another day.

The long cut across Geoffrey’s thigh stitched closed the quickest. Jonathan realised he missed the mending altogether when he glanced down at Geoffrey’s torn trouser leg. But the one wound that Geoffrey needed to close most remained a gaping, cavernous thing.

Had they followed _—hunted_ them here from London?

Jonathan recalled the sickening tale of how Carl Eldritch had apparently stalked Geoffrey’s father back to Dublin. And then, the miserable resumption of that hunt, that cycle, years later when Geoffrey and Eldritch had tracked Ian McCullum together, only to end him, too.

There was no way Jonathan could stand to let Geoffrey inherit the same fate. He would not allow it.

“Geoffrey, stop.” He tried tugging his arm back. Wounded as Geoffrey was though, he still managed to clutch Jonathan’s arm tightly, even one-handed. His other hand, however, barely held Jonathan’s shirt packed to his side anymore. _“Enough._ Please, Geoffrey. That’s enough.”

But it wasn’t, of course. Jonathan freed his arm, rubbed the new bite until he felt the punctures begin to close, that strange tingle of healing from within.

The wound on Geoffrey’s side had been burnt wider than the sword slash that created it. More bloody orichalcum or whatever new, deadly chemical concoction. These particular guardsmen fought dirty, taught too well by Geoffrey. It had been an ambush under the guise of a friendly meeting. They’d been aware somehow, that Geoffrey was much different from the man they’d known two years ago.

Geoffrey’s pulse was still terrifyingly slow. Slower than the sedate pace their changed bodies now required.

“Was the sword forged in silver as well?” Jonathan asked, annoyance in his voice with an effort to cover over the tracks his own fear had made across his composure.

“No,” Geoffrey shook his head. Winced. “They fucking blasted me with the powder after… after they had me down from the sword. Should’ve just... cut my damn head off… b-been easier…”

Yes. It would have been. It would have been so much easier, and quicker too, if these brutes had decapitated Geoffrey and burned the remains with fire. But no, they had wanted him to suffer. That much was so very apparent.

Jonathan grabbed his undershirt, pressed it into Geoffrey’s hands. “Hold it tight. The wound is still far too large to bandage yet.” He grimaced at the sight of bone and worse. The snaking sheen of damaged pink and red that Jonathan had seen enough of in the war to know a man was doomed to die. A mortal wound.

He hoped the preternatural strength Geoffrey possessed would be enough. Death by infection was a laugh to them now, but Geoffrey had turned sheet-pale all over; he’d lost too much blood and his circulatory system could not clot fast enough, what continued to flow out. His veins and capillaries looked ready to burst from out of his skin. Jonathan was sure Geoffrey was already losing the blood he’d given him.

Vampires, especially ones as strong as they, could regenerate, yes. Not even short-term sun exposure could truly kill them. Or so it was told—written. The blood serums Jonathan managed to concoct bolstered those hypotheticals to fact. Despite all that, Jonathan had not ever been a gambling sort of man, and he did not want to take his chances with the one person he held so fully in his heart.

Jonathan rummaged through his suitcase for another undershirt and quickly threw it on. He pulled on a dark grey sweater over top, not that he was bothered by the nip of the weather any longer. As he walked by Geoffrey he bent over him to press his mouth to blue lips. “You’ll be all right.”

“Where are you going?”

Throwing on his coat, Jonathan answered in cavalier tone, “I'm going to kill them.”

“The Hell you are, Reid!” Geoffrey tried to get up from the chair, but quickly resigned himself to staying down. Pain flickered off him like a flame.

“Besides, you need more blood than I can—”

“I'd rather die than take the life of one of my men.”

Jonathan rubbed his palm over his mouth, irritation and anxiety mounting. “I won't have that. I _can't._ You are in no shape to fight me over it. You aren’t going to die, Geoffrey. Not after all this. And they aren't your men anymore. You owe them _nothing.”_

Geoffrey sat there panting for a moment, forehead wrinkled pensively. “But you owe me, isn't that right? For what you've done?”

With a nod, Jonathan turned towards the door. “Then count this as my paying a penance due.”

He slammed the door shut, and locked it behind him. Pocketed the key.

Taking to the roofs, it did not take long for Jonathan to find the men responsible. Like a scent hound, he followed the throb of their drunken heartbeats, the distinctive, chemical edge they cut through the air with their concealed, archaic weaponry.

He knew what to expect of them, given the destruction they had rendered upon Geoffrey’s body, but Jonathan would make sure that these guardsmen would not anticipate a single thing from him.


	2. Part II: Homesickness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be nearly filled to the brim with headcanons - including giving Geoffrey a middle name, just FYI, and I'm excusing the uncharacteristic "schmoop" (that's what you call it, yeah?) by saying that I believe Jonathan Reid is canonically, an absolute hopeless romantic.
> 
> So, maybe this turned out to not be as "graphic" as I thought it could possibly get in the violence department, but I'll still uphold my warnings if you're especially squeamish, et cetera, et cetera.
> 
> *Unsure if I should've included this bit before, but:  
> IRA = Irish Republican Army  
> ADRIC = Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary
> 
> **I refuse to be held accountable for any influence my reading of E.M. Forster and Henry James (while writing this) had on my style… unless it’s good.
> 
> ***As I've stated in the previous part of this series, I headcanon Jonathan & Geoffrey older than their canonical thirty-eight years; if I recall, I have Geoffrey as 41 in 1918, at the time he was turned, and Jonathan being a vague age in his mid-forties.
> 
> Obligatory chapter inspiration music:  
> [The Outline - "In Light of Recent News](https://open.spotify.com/track/2OK4ko9V4uKKAQUA3nRA8f?si=cQmFz3_nSrmikx1uPYZp9w)  
> [The Black Angels - "Half Believing"](https://open.spotify.com/track/17L56anBpjtOPEIPquv4mG?si=XFRL77pzSBSg7EMIDlIBqw)  
> And because I'm me, I have to include The Pogue's rendition of ["Danny Boy"](https://open.spotify.com/track/7pnxpfT5BmPFgIHv6kB6Ld?si=wQMsxePmS-WpJFDZMUeOow)  
> I'd also like to say alt-j's "Pleader" helped for atmosphere, but it's perhaps too Welsh in theme haha

Stalking hadn’t exactly been part of Jonathan’s methodology when it came to his hunts. That was much more in line with Geoffrey’s style when he'd ruthlessly take down others of their kind. Regardless, it had quickly become second nature for Jonathan, too, despite it not being one he particularly liked to confront when the need arose. Presently, Jonathan also had to be sure these Priwen ruffians weren’t going to be gathering in the vicinity of any loitering civilians when he made his move. He took note of the gas masks dangling around their necks like macabre medallions. The odour of chlorine that adhered to the fibres of their clothing was pungent, to the point where it could be followed all on its own; it was strong enough for Jonathan to know he must keep his distance for now. It could not truly harm him, but the toxic fumes would certainly be a distraction, something Jonathan could not allow to happen. Then of course, there was the matter of whiffs of orichalcum he caught here and there.

Policemen patrolled the streets more than usual since the shooting—already a day coming to be infamously known as “Bloody Sunday,” though the streets were mostly empty this late otherwise, thankfully. Jonathan checked his pocket watch—just after ten. He wondered if Dublin officials were going to enforce a curfew of any kind.

Jonathan followed the trio of men towards a narrow stretch of cobbled road. It cut between dilapidated tenements ornamented with hanging laundry and various potted greenery that wept from the hazy eyes of half a dozen windows. Urine and an indescribable impression of malady strangled the air here. Cold moisture clung to everything with a cloying intensity, strengthening the foetid odour of decay and stagnant water. He could sense illness pulsing through clustered bodies like the beat of a second heart; pleurisy, viral infection, fever, and the sluggish fear of an exhaustive type of starvation lived within the walls of these buildings. It wasn’t unlike Whitechapel or the seedier parts of Southwark. The empathetic doctor in Jonathan was appalled and desperately wanted to abandon his hunt at that point to investigate the overwhelming congestion of sickness, tend to those who so badly needed it out this way, but he refocussed himself and reluctantly pressed on. Absentmindedly, he wondered if Geoffrey had ever lived similarly as a child. He could never fathom it, himself.

There were alleyways nearby; Jonathan hoped he could perhaps funnel the fight into one of them, use the narrow space and the powers he held to his advantage, creating a minor choke point if necessary. He didn’t much worry about hiding the bodies, they could rot there like so much rubbish for all Jonathan cared. Maybe their deaths could be chalked up to more results of infighting within street gangs or from insurgencies between the IRA and ADRIC.

Jonathan held himself like a veritable gargoyle, as if he were poised beside the spires of Gothic architecture, not blunt chimney pots on Georgian roofs gone to rack and ruin. There were only three men, it would be easy now that Jonathan was somewhat aware of how they fought, and he’d taken on more than this in the past. Despite that, he wouldn’t be careless nor overconfident like Geoffrey at times became.

He leapt from his perch, hardly noticing the impact vibrating through his bones as he landed silently on the cobblestones several feet away from the Priwen guards. They walked on, speaking and chuckling amongst themselves at first, then one of them happened to turn casually in Jonathan’s direction. Jonathan took advantage, moving in tendrils of smoke to quickly slam into the man, separating him from the other two. There were shouts of shock, angry curses. Weapons being drawn. The battle was unfolding.

The young gunner at Jonathan’s feet pulled his pistol, eyes large with terror and resentment both. Jonathan lunged on top of him and took hold of the man’s wrist, snapping it in the process. A pained yelp and heavy clatter of metal against stone sounded as the gun fell from the guardsman’s hand. Jonathan felt a bullet tear into his side—the others taking aim at him. Fixed on his prey, Jonathan ignored the noise of guns continuing to fire in his direction and the pain of another shot hitting his leg. In swift movements, Jonathan tore the gasmask from the gunner’s neck, then curled forward to clamp his mouth wide over his throat, pulling back as soon as his teeth sank in, ripping skin and muscle away. Hot blood sprayed upwards. It poured down Jonathan’s throat and over his lips in a messy stream to coat his beard. He spat flesh from his mouth and wiped his coat sleeve across his chin in a slovenly manner, ready to throw himself at the other men while the one he still straddled kicked and squirmed, coated in a wash of his own blood that continued to gush from what was left of his throat. Chlorine gas began to pump into the air in its sickly shade of chartreuse.

No sooner had Jonathan stood than he was flung into the brick facing of a tenement by a strong, unseen force. Before he could get his bearings, someone grabbed him up with a hand fisted tightly into his sweater. He was dragged to his feet against the wall of the crumbling building, slightly dazed and feeling the burning choke of chlorine in his lungs, the sting in his eyes. Jonathan raised his head, coming face to face with his assailant. His heart sped and he immediately tried twisting out of the vice-grip pressing against his sternum, crushing bone and cartilage, lifting Jonathan further until the toes of his boots scraped the stones.

 _But how?_ Jonathan thought with immense trepidation—it was Geoffrey who had him pinned to the wall, only… it wasn’t him, not really. His entire being blinked and flickered, virtually transparent. Undeterred by the oddity about it, Jonathan knew well the deadly madness and irritation in this ghostly visage. Confusion quickly set in, and further yet when Jonathan saw through the apparition-like body of Geoffrey to view a fully corporeal version—the real Geoffrey—snarling as he cut through the other two Priwen members with claws and teeth. Disemboweling one efficiently, then well-nigh decapitating the other with the way he tore into the man’s neck and bent it back at an unnatural angle. Jonathan heard the pop and snap. Blood flung into the air in curving, fountainous arcs.

Finally, Jonathan was released as the faux image of Geoffrey fluttered out of existence. Hand pressed to his aching chest, Jonathan almost fell to the dirty stone again. Blood and pulpy viscera steamed across the dimly lit street awash in a palette of tenebrism. Geoffrey had made a butchery of the Priwen men so quickly, without hesitance. A passionate slaughter.

Tiptoeing over puddles of night-blackened blood, Geoffrey began to sing a halting, sombre tune very quietly, _“Oh, Danny boy…”_ He didn’t acknowledge Jonathan, only appeared to throw his attentions into surveying his handiwork. _“But when ye come… and all the flowers are… dyin’. If I am dead, as dead I may well be…”_ A woman’s horrified scream came from an open window overlooking the road. Geoffrey came closer now and locked eyes with Jonathan. _“Ye’ll come... an’ find the place where I am lyin’.”_ He crouched down and dragged the side of his right hand through pooling blood beside one of the dead men’s heads. Standing, he brought his cupped palm to his mouth and drank, tongue catching a rivulet that escaped down the inside of his wrist. His sleeve cuffs were consumed by scarlet.

Jonathan very nearly found him beautiful, standing there amongst the carnage: a melancholic figure in a Caravaggio, the only vivid reds here blotting the pale shades of Geoffrey's skin and shirt, all else turned to a flood of ink in the streets; he was the proud, yet scathed sole survivor of a skirmish, not yet knowing what kind of damage his mind would later come to bear despite this victory. Jonathan wanted to speak aloud his addled-awe. Instead, he said, “You’re a monster, and I am the conniving beast that loosed you upon the world.”

Geoffrey tilted his head up towards the blanket of clear night sky. “And the hellhound that hunts by my side.” He then nodded down to the man at his feet. It was the guardsman Jonathan had so brutally killed. Not with the exacting ardour that Geoffrey had used just now with the rest, but with a particular viciousness Jonathan wasn’t entirely used to acting out. Perhaps he would never be able to fully acclimatise his conscience and ethics to the merciless, bestial half residing within him. “You weren’t so clean-cut here yourself, doctor,” Geoffrey continued. “I’d say you're losing your surgical precision. Mite out of practise?”

The tattered clothing Geoffrey had on when Jonathan left him was changed, and evidently in a rush. He wore one of his more ill-fitting jackets and no waistcoat—for a new one would need to be purchased—and upon the fabric of his shirt, blood was not merely smeared, but seeped through from his own wound, creating patterned eruptions of deep carmine around his stomach. A reminder Jonathan didn’t need that these men had practically eviscerated Geoffrey. Jonathan felt they'd both given the Priwen guards a collective, justified manner of death.

“...You watched me.” Jonathan spoke of it as fact more than asking.

“S'pose so.” Geoffrey shrugged with his now infamous cocksure grin. “Needed a moment to heal up a little further so I wasn’t dragging me goddamned intestines behind. Catching up to you was easy enough, after.” He became more serious, spoke more quietly. “A bleedin’, goddamned trap I ought ‘ave sensed. Fucking Dennings, Ryan, Walsh—Wolfe, maybe?” he rambled. “Ah, nevermind it, I forget the big bloke's name. Look, I did not know them well, but I knew them all the same. Rookie thugs from Limerick that joined up with some tenth-rate-shite gang in London before the pandemic. I’d ‘stole’ them for mine and recruited them into the Guard shortly before leavin’, myself. Needed to make up for the handful of men I promoted, and the ones we lost, with some… _fresh blood_ in the lower ranks, so to speak.” Geoffrey smiled again at his juvenile equivoque. “They weren't the brightest bunch of bastards, but they hated leeches with a vile passion needed in the Guard.”

Jonathan stomped forward. “All right. But how on earth did they even know you were back in Ireland, Geoffrey? And why did you sneak away without a word earlier in the night—why not just tell me, if your sole purpose was to meet up with these men whom you knew? You hid it from me instead, almost getting yourself killed in the process. The idea of lies between us isn’t one I’m overly fond of.” There was an unspoken ulterior motive here that Jonathan was sensing. Be it from the guardsmen or Geoffrey, he couldn’t say for certain.

But with his own secret in tow, he was being a hypocrite, wasn't he?

“I’ll indulge you more, but not just now, not here. We’re both a sight.” He then gestured to the people-full buildings around them and the carnage in the street. “Let’s go before the coppers or any of those black and tan arseholes happen upon us twiddling our thumbs around the mess of these backstabbing gobshites.”

It was hard to argue that point. To be frank, now that the dust of battle settled somewhat, Jonathan began lingering on the fact that Geoffrey had just killed two Priwen members after he’d lambasted Jonathan earlier for wanting to do the same in retribution for almost taking Geoffrey away from him. He found it hard to wrap his mind around this ostensibly sudden change of heart. Grabbing Geoffrey by the arm, Jonathan led them both down an alley and shoved Geoffrey against a wall.

Lips pressed to Geoffrey’s ear, Jonathan whispered in a harsh tone, “Are we yet _even,_ dear one?”

“I don’t think that’s the crux of our situation anymore.” 

Jonathan was pushed back, just enough so that they still remained close. With a grin crooked as his charm, Geoffrey lifted a hand to Jonathan’s face and gave his cheek a couple patronising pats before resting it there. He began to sing again, unprompted. It was the same tune as before, only Geoffrey faltered on the melody to the point it sounded to Jonathan more like a reading of poetry than song.

 _“All my grave shall warmer… sweeter be, if you will bend... and tell me that you love me. Then I shall sleep in peace… until you come to me.”_ Geoffrey sighed and brought their foreheads together. _“In sunshine or in shadow, oh Jonny, I love you so.”_

Jonathan couldn’t help the fragment of a smile that formed across his face. He took hold of Geoffrey’s lapels, pulling him into a kiss that quickly became deeper and more insistent. When Jonathan broke away he asked Geoffrey, under the guise of a bit of playfulness, “Is that right? Will there come a time when you can admit this yourself, without the aid of song?”

“Mm, the night is still young, isn’t it?” Clinging suddenly tighter to Jonathan himself, Geoffrey murmured more seriously, as if with threat, “I’m not leaving you. Swear it, Jon, I’m not. On the souls of my family, and their ashes that make up the soil here, that toss in the waves, I swear it. Thought I could. I’d thought about leaving, I _had._ I suppose I’ll admit, though,” he looked about them, brushing back his hair, “you aren’t half bad… for some lawdy-daw Sasanach.” They both smiled at the jab, even though Geoffrey had a pesky, growing habit of mollifying serious and vulnerable moments with lighthearted quips or, more frequently and less tolerable, icy bouts of anger. He wished Geoffrey would lay down that guard of his for good—at least around Jonathan. Perhaps further in time, Geoffrey would. They had enough of it to spare, and Jonathan could be a patient man when the proper occasion called for it.

“I can't part from you. I can’t.” Geoffrey shook his head, quietly frantic, as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. It smeared a thin layer of blood towards his jaw. Jonathan was about to comment, but suddenly, Geoffrey grew very still.

“Do you hear—”

Footsteps. A dampened clacking of shoe soles over the cobblestone that grew in sound, coming closer towards their little hideout. Jonathan and Geoffrey waited through an anxious curiosity until whoever it was passed by the mouth of the alley, only then did they both peer out together.

“Ugh, what a proper mess, a waste. Disappointing, really.” The posh, English-accented voice belonged to a whip of a man with a smart dress sense and carefully formed waves of strawberry blond hair smoothed atop his head. He pivoted around the scatter of bodies, gesticulating towards them with one hand as the length of his ulster coat spun around his legs dramatically.

Ascalon—he must be. Geoffrey tugged Jonathan back into cover, though it soon seemed it didn’t much matter.

“Geoffrey Cathal McCullum. You’re quite renowned, you know. And not just for your work with that band of Priwen mongrels. Pity this lot wasn't evidence of your prowess as a leader. Though certainly of something else, hm?”

Unfortunately, Geoffrey took the bait and stepped out into the street. Jonathan tried to grab after him, but it was pointless. “These men weren’t anything close to my best—”

The stranger gave him a vulpine grin, showing off the gleam of his fangs. “Oh no, of course not.” He laughed. It grated on Jonathan. “But, if we’d sent your best and most trusted, would they have hesitated? That _is_ a question to consider. Terribly important. And”—the man sighed—“I suppose we’ll have to figure a middle ground now.” He sniffed haughtily, hands in his pockets as he strolled up to Geoffrey and Jonathan. “The two of you _are_ something, aren’t you? Mm. Mesmerising. Though Doctor Reid, you’re just a _pest_ at this point. A pebble in our shoe. On the whole, we’ll need to find out just how much loyalty your _progeny_ here still owns, however. What is that loyalty _worth?”_

“I’m certain I don’t catch your meaning. Who are you?” Jonathan demanded.

The man’s countenance betrayed nothing, not even his ambiguous mortal age, though his eyes were a soulless blue. He pulled out a red silk handkerchief from one pocket, offering it to Jonathan and Geoffrey. “For your, uhm…” The vampire grimaced as he pantomimed wiping his own chin. Geoffrey snatched it from his hand. “It isn’t monogrammed of course, in case either of you got an itch to sleuth.”

Geoffrey wiped his mouth and jaw, his hands even, and when he was finished, dropped the handkerchief to the ground, stepping on it immediately.

The stranger crossed his arms then casually pointed a gloved finger in their direction. “If you—especially _you,_ Mister McCullum—continue to be an extraordinary bother to us, well… I’m sure we’ll become better acquainted sooner rather than later. Perhaps with marginally less pleasantries exchanged. Enjoy the remainder of your evening, gentlemen.” He looked them up and down, paying a particular scrutinisation to Geoffrey’s person. _“Extraordinarily_ romantic night, isn’t it?” He smiled before passing them by, disappearing into a blanket of dancing shadow a few steps later. Jonathan was surprised Geoffrey did not attempt to go after him.

“Bloody knew it.”

“What is it?” Jonathan asked, unable to immediately tear his eyes away from where that pompous Ascalon vampire had fled. The man didn’t reappear anywhere nearby, as far as Jonathan could see.

Geoffrey grabbed Jonathan by the arm. He jerked his chin up towards the rooftops. Right. They needed to get gone just as quickly. Concerned voices were starting to stir the air around them.

Back at their flat, they cleaned up best they could without another trip out to the spicket, then Geoffrey began packing in a rush. A moderate smell of smoke permeated the single room from where the backdraft drifted down the dirty chimney. Geoffrey had instructed Jonathan to burn their ruined clothing. The floorboards still bore thick streaks and droplets of Geoffrey’s blood, as did the old wingback. Jonathan’s blood hardly added to the drying stains after he’d tended to his own bullet wounds.

“They were paid off, I reckon. Who knows how fully Priwen are in Ascalon’s pockets now.”

Jonathan looked up from organising his bags. “Do you really believe that?”

“Those bastards all but spelled it out to me before they attacked! And further clarity was added when that _leech_ came to us. I missed being a part of something, all right? Missed the usefulness and purpose the Guard gave me. I knew I could fool them as I have everyone else. I know the strength the shield of my mask gives me. So, I’d wired the main headquarters a few days ago with an inquiry. Received word back to set up a meeting here in Dublin. But can you blame me, Jon?”

Heart sinking, Jonathan asked, “Were you planning on leaving with them, if they hadn’t known, if it hadn’t been a set up?”

Geoffrey stopped his distraught pacing about the small room. Approaching Jonathan, he admitted it silently. Admitted what Jonathan had only guessed at, what his intuition rightly assumed. Geoffrey levelled his gaze at Jonathan, moving to grip his shoulder gently. “There isn’t a place for me now.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a mournful smirk. “Not even Éire. I see that.”

Jonathan clasped his hand over Geoffrey’s and took a tentative step forward, closer without crowding. Geoffrey's body still gave subtle tremors from the spike of adrenaline and insufficient blood. “Come with me back to London. You said you couldn’t leave me, that you knew it now. We’ll leave tomorrow, at sunset if possible, on the last ferry to Liverpool. If not then, we'll leave as soon as we can. Buy umbrellas and look like idiots, the pair of us, I don't care.” Weakly, he tried to smile. “I promise, there’s a place for you, with me.”

“To laze about like furniture?”

Too much time had already been wasted during their time in Ireland. There wasn’t any way for Jonathan to get research done, let alone concentrate long enough while he felt as though they were on the run constantly. He missed it all horribly. The pull he’d been recently developing with the Brotherhood allowed him this leave, as their power had somehow trickled down through Pembroke in ways that did not seem to end with Edgar's passing. It allowed him to keep his position, despite his months of absence. Jonathan didn’t dare question it. Not at this stage, at least. He’d prefer to be on surer footing with them first, lest he appear ungrateful.

“There’s something I wish to discuss with you, as well.” Jonathan trailed his hand down Geoffrey’s arm, holding himself back from taking his hand. Geoffrey was incredibly tense, hackles still raised defensively. “Personally, I’d rather not do it while we’re here. I don’t believe it’s safe any longer. But if you’re willing to leave Ireland now… I understand Dublin was your home—”

“I had come back”—Geoffrey interjected, carrying on as if Jonathan hadn’t spoken at all—“when I was… fifteen, sixteen, maybe. For a very brief time. It wasn’t the homecoming a boy should look forward to, but part of me longed for it. The shine of missing what I recalled of Dublin became tarnished shortly thereafter. And Carl brought me back to London once again. I never returned until you and I...” Geoffrey shook his head. The skin below his eyes had darkened, and the blue of his irises appeared steelier. “What I'd been homesick for is long gone. Dead in the ground. Nothing has improved here. If anything, it has only got much worse. The only thing changed is me. Ireland is in a state of warring stasis. I can’t deny that it saddens me.”

“Much like us, in many ways.”

Geoffrey nodded. “Much like us.”

There was privilege the Brotherhood of Saint-Paul’s Stole could give Jonathan to not only have any and all medical research his mind could dream up be funded, there was also a chance he could inquire about a place for Geoffrey within the ranks of their hunters. He desperately wanted that. His partner was more than qualified and had quite the reputation preceding him, for good or ill. Geoffrey was obviously a threat to not only the Ascalon Club but to Priwen, too: something the Brotherhood could potentially find great interest in, and thereby use to their advantage.

When Jonathan met Geoffrey’s eyes again, they’d widened; he looked aghast and tore his arm from Jonathan’s grasp, having read the thoughts Jonathan stupidly left unguarded.

“You’re off your head! You mean—you mean to pawn me off to them? A lost cause to be shuffled around for goddamned _experiments._ Prodded and laughed at under the stares of those bastards in some dingy operating theatre?” He sneered, backing further away from Jonathan.

“What? Geoffrey, never! Listen to me, I only want to help. I understand what this all must be like for you, coming back to Dublin in its current state, while the destitute flounder and civil unrest—”

“No, you _don't_ get it, Jonathan, and you’ve no goddamned right to claim you do _to me._ Sure, you've witnessed something like this, I don’t disagree with or doubt that fact. But you could always leave it behind. You never had to truly live it. Have it be a part of you! The fight of Ireland will always be in my blood, it’s why I survive, everyday that passes. Why I always have. This other half—it's a part of what you breathe, it's in the stale or rotten food you eat, the dirty water you ration. Aye, Doctor Reid, you've tended to patients living in squalor, but all the while, you got to lay your head beneath the roof of luxury each night, warm and safe. Hell, safer yet from sickness and starvation, we both are because of this curse. However, you never knew otherwise. Even with the war: the lauded surgeon. Isn’t that right? And you eventually got to come home, didn't you? War wasn't at your bleeding doorstep.”

Jonathan laughed, incredulous. “So you mean to pretend the air raids never touched London, then?” He was getting beyond tired of bickering with Geoffrey over the differences their class brought them. Ever so often, it came to this. He thought it wasn’t a boundary any longer, being what they were now, together. Geoffrey pointedly disagreed, time and again.

Currently, he huffed at Jonathan. “As if it truly affected people like you and your family.”

“Need I remind you, I was _killed_ and turned a vampire upon my return home from the war. I left one Hell for a wholly new one and against my will and want, entered into some ancient battle I desired no parts in. Not to mention being hunted down by _your_ men when I'd first awoke, before I even knew what the depth of my own nature was, no less.”

“I haven't forgotten, no. But I see my maker has conveniently forgotten the recurrent destruction of his own murderous hand, and where it left the biggest marks.”

“Geoffrey, I—”

But Geoffrey turned away from him, and it stung.

“Leave it. We must justify that which has stained our hands, keep at bay the guilt, lest we allow the call of madness to seize us.” There was a small tremble of doubt in Geoffrey’s words. Jonathan chose to remain silent over it. “So how… So how the hell are you supposed to help me, Jon? You and... those deceivers in the Brotherhood of Saint-Paul's Stole.”

“I want to give you purpose again. Steer you to it, but let it be your decision. Let me continue to make things right between us. My God, _I'm trying.”_ Geoffrey let Jonathan cling to his back, rest his mouth against his nape. Jonathan pleaded into Geoffrey’s skin, “I need you like I’ve needed no other, Geoffrey. Come home with me.” He felt Geoffrey sigh and relax against him. Something stirred within Jonathan then, a bravery different than the sort needed for his murderous appetites. _“Make a home with me.”_ He kissed the back of Geoffrey’s neck, reaching around him to ghost fingers over Geoffrey's shirt buttons.

Geoffrey placed his palm over Jonathan’s wandering hand, applying the slightest pressure. He let out a quiet moan. “I want this, even in the days you strain my sanity, I do want it. That hasn’t changed. I’m… sorry I ever cause you to doubt it.”

“And what path do you want for yourself, Geoffrey? What about that?”

“I…”

Jonathan felt the mild panic simmering inside Geoffrey as he searched blindly for an answer he clearly thought he'd had. He turned in Jonathan’s arms; a distressed appearance took him over as he came up empty-handed. _Cornered._

“You may always miss Priwen. Leading your men,” Jonathan supplied the answer for him. He awaited the possibility of Geoffrey disputing this out of denial. “There isn’t anything wrong with that.”

 _“My duty._ How could I not? They are all I—it's all I've ever known.”

For the first time in a long while, Jonathan thought Geoffrey appeared frightened. Even dying, bleeding out in that very chair a few feet off, he hadn’t seemed all that much afraid, more phlegmatic if anything. But this, a simple truth spoken aloud, was enough to strike his formidable courage down.

“There is so much more to know and accomplish now, you'd said it yourself, only you choose not to look beyond your time in the Guard.” Jonathan held Geoffrey at arm’s length then, searching his face. “You told me you wanted more, yet you haven’t reached for it, when nearly everything could be ours. A partnership with the Brotherhood of Saint-Paul’s Stole would be mutually beneficial in more than one way. Edgar was not representative of who they are as an organisation, despite what you may want to believe.”

“Is what I do want so different from you and your ingrained profession? A beast, tending to those weakened by illness. _Easy prey,_ Jonathan.”

Jonathan frowned. He thought of Elisabeth. Thought of the first time he’d seen the monster beneath her beauty as she fed on a dying patient; mercy. “You know I don’t take advantage of my position in that way.” He could never be so bold—hoped it wouldn’t ever come to that, though he knew the itch of temptation in the hours of more invasive surgeries. “You’re like a soldier returned home from a war who _chooses_ to live back within that chaos. Let me help you leave it behind. I understand that Priwen was your life's work, but… a life lived amongst nothing but a warzone would drive a man with even the strongest constitution mad.”

“D'you think me mental? Is that it, then?”

Jonathan tried not to give pause before answering. “No, I don't think that. You deserve better, a fresh start as they say. That’s what I think. Geoffrey, I let my professional life take over just about all else, yes. However, it is this work I do that–that gives me a purpose through redemption, no matter how small that progress may be.”

“I can't go chasing something like that forever. You may think you've indebted yourself to a life of redemption, for your sister, your mother, and that woman. The other leech you'd befriended. You visit graves and speak apologies, not memories, nothing good. When you fucked off to Scotland, gathering research on our lineage and William Marshal, did you cry over her ashes as you fed them to the wind? Finding blame in yourself again—”

Jonathan stepped away from Geoffrey abruptly. “She had a name, _use it.”_

There was a vacancy left between them then. Geoffrey spoke softly into Jonathan's mind, _You won't fail anyone by leaving me._

Tears tinted Jonathan's world red. “Maybe not a failure, as I had with Elisabeth. It would be a betrayal.” He swallowed, trying to loosen the constriction in his throat. “Again. So, what is it that's holding _you_ back, Geoffrey? We could do something with meaning, together. Don't you want that, to be decent? We could keep people safe, in spite of what we are. You could be something more than the Guard let you be.”

“Don't you dare insinuate that Priwen does not help the citizens under their watch. The whole fucking country would be in ruin if it weren't for what we have done for so long. I _‘ave_ helped. It’s you and that league of... _buttoned-up bibliophiles_ that claim us to be subjugating bedlamites! London would have fallen under siege by blood drinkers until the entirety of England—perhaps all of Great Britain—was peopled by… by our kind. Did Priwen not strive to do exactly what you had? The Red Queen's saviour-vampire of London,” Geoffrey spit each syllable with disgust. “Worked nightly to exterminate the skals just as you did, helped to end a secondary plague and another Disaster. And I _knew,_ I knew Edgar Swansea was up to something before you opened your eyes to it! You berated me for the shit my men did to ‘im, against my strict orders, yet was it not you who dealt the killing blow? You say these things that make it sound as if I've done nothing of import, that maybe I’ve always been something evil, yet look at all you’d done in the weeks you were but a fledgling. My whole life was a reclamation until you stole it from me! Again I try, despite what I am, but you only want me if I do your bidding, do what you think is right. And now you ask of me to bend under yet more rules.”

Jonathan almost felt like begging—almost. He hated that Geoffrey made a perfect point about the snap judgements Jonathan had made; influenced by what he mostly learned from Edgar, thus lumping Geoffrey’s character in with the whole. “It isn’t about what’s right. Maybe I am no more innocent than you. And if that’s so, then it’s all the more reason we should take this chance. I am not saying you should give up the good I know you want to do, or that you have, but I know there's another way for it. Protecting people from the worst of the vampiric ilk _is_ necessary, yes—I have never forgone that belief. Perhaps, if anything, it has strengthened, knowing what I myself am capable of, and you. There is another way, though. One where we aren’t lurking around the city, hiding from the law like vigilantes in the dark. Are we not more fit than ever for doing work in keeping preternatural evils at bay?

“Leave the Guard of Priwen as the memory it has become. Whatever sordid means they now utilise to complete their hunts has nothing to do with you, it isn't your responsibility anymore. They've made their choices, and it's time you made one for yourself, Geoffrey.”

“What do you suggest, then? Tell me now, or forget it. You want no secrets between us, so speak your piece.”

Jonathan took a steadying, false breath before he began. “The Stole offered me a position of research. I could keep my position at the Pembroke, and in my spare time, be allowed the funds and resources for anatomical and haematological vampiric studies… and any others they'd ask of me. In turn, I'd have their sworn protection. I want to further that by requesting a position for you, Geoffrey: to seek out and study others like us, and those much more dangerous, much like their Watchers have done. Not only that, but to hunt them down, if the need arises. Who better to do that than someone of your skill and power? I don’t think their Primate would be able to argue against it.”

But Geoffrey shook his head in disagreement. “No… no, there is always a catch with people like them. You and I both know what they would classify me as. How long have you been in contact with them?”

“Several months… my correspondence with the Primate started not long before we'd left for Ireland.” Jonathan tried to close his mind off securely. He felt a bit ill knowing he was willfully lying, but he didn’t think it wise to reveal Usher Talltree’s identity—not at the moment. “They’d been made aware we were leaving England together, but I did not divulge where. Although, I suspect they’ve sufficient ways of finding out.”

“Let me think on it. That’s all I can give you for now.”

Jonathan brought Geoffrey close, and held him tightly for several seconds. The scent of him was thick inside their flat—his blood, coagulated on the floor, reminding Jonathan of how he'd come so close to losing him completely tonight; and Geoffrey's arousal, still concealed beneath his trousers, though present. Picking up on these thoughts perhaps, Geoffrey took Jonathan’s left hand in his and dragged it down his body between them. He pushed Jonathan's hand against him, that coveted warmth. Jonathan palmed at the rising curve there, and leaned his head down to place a kiss beneath Geoffrey’s ear.

“Do you want me on my knees for you?”

“Is that how it all gets resolved, then?” Geoffrey’s voice was stoic as ever, though it hitched with an almost imperceptible gasp.

Jonathan began undoing the buttons of Geoffrey’s fly, anticipating a halt in this unspoken want. “Does it have to be a resolution? A give and take. I only wish to give.”

“You'd grovel if I asked it of you.” 

When Jonathan hesitated to argue, Geoffrey brushed his hands aside and Jonathan’s fingertips slipped from cool brass. Geoffrey unbuckled his belt and stepped away. Backwards steps, eyes set to the motion of his hands, the floor beneath his feet. An old wall came up between them then, transparent though it was. It was like Geoffrey existed as the sole occupant in the room, his desire independent of Jonathan’s, detached from it. Jonathan observed through cracked glass.

Geoffrey sat himself on the edge of the bed, his only glance to Jonathan was one of expectancy; a small raise of his eyebrows as he bent to unlace his boots. He showed hardly any patience in waiting out Jonathan’s answer to his mute beckoning, wasting no time in dropping his trousers and shorts, shucking them off his legs along with his rumpled socks. Next was the uncharacteristically careful unbuttoning of his clean shirt; thick fingers moving with elegance over each dainty piece of plastic. The curved hem skirted and framed the thickening width of Geoffrey’s cock. Jonathan imagined that faint tickle of fabric and his own erection pulsed sympathetically. With rapt attention, Jonathan stood there watching Geoffrey’s unveiling. At times, he enjoyed this alone, more than any other sexual act or advance between them.

“I could’ve lost you,” he said in a hush, needing it to be known again—the personal severity of this cleaving through his life that was so close to an amputation of worth and meaning. The need in Jonathan felt parasitic, as if he might die off without the sustenance of Geoffrey's presence to latch onto. He'd never truly taken stock of the loneliness his life brought him until he was already dead. Jonathan had a keen eye, but not when it came to analysing himself.

He was unsure if he should undress as well, but believed this was more about Geoffrey than himself. As it was, Geoffrey seemed unaffected, though his prick hung mostly hard in the shadow between his thighs. 

Saying nothing, Geoffrey reached out for Jonathan. Took his hand without a word of intent, only letting his eyes speak in some more honest form. Jonathan wanted him desperately then, perhaps as much as the first night they’d bedded each other. It wasn’t about the sexual intimacy he could share, it was all loving Geoffrey precisely because he _could;_ because Geoffrey allowed it when he could have easily never sought Jonathan out again or much more simply, just destroyed him. There was something powerful in it which Jonathan could not explain. And Geoffrey was still here, with him, angry and fighting, so violently passionate in this altered state just as he was in life. A vigor able to flourish without end. Jonathan had fallen in love with passion, for he did not know it without limits in his own life, save for what he dedicated to his work. He felt it in Geoffrey, felt the totality of it towards him.

Geoffrey tossed aside his shirt. “It is loneliness, isn’t it? Binding us?”

“I don’t find it really matters anymore.” 

Once Geoffrey was stripped out of every stitch of clothing, Jonathan took notice that each superficial wound of his had healed completely, leaving not a single scabbed trace. Where deeper, puncturing injury marred his flesh, angry pink scars had formed like raised lesions. In time, those too would blur away.

“Stand up,” Jonathan said.

Geoffrey appeared nonplussed, though he did stand, rolling his shoulders back, the rest of his body stiffening with the motion. Jonathan pushed up his shirt sleeves as he approached him, tucking the cuffs away in folds of fabric. He did not put his hands on Geoffrey, but restrained himself from it as he stepped in close. 

“What will you do if they are lying?” Geoffrey asked, unflinching. “We only have to look to Priwen's disloyalty for how wrong this could all go.”

“I’ll let you do what it is you do best, then. I've confidence in your judgments by now—to protect us.”

“And if I’m the one who is dishonest?”

“Tell me something true now.” Jonathan pressed his forehead against Geoffrey’s, briefly shutting tight his eyes. He imparted his wish unto the swell of Geoffrey’s thoughts.

“I can’t.” Geoffrey's words were strained. “You already know it, Jon.”

“Just say it, then. It isn't that hard,” Jonathan pressed.

Geoffrey’s hands came up to cup Jonathan’s face. “But it _is_ when I don't have the words!”

“How can that be so, when there are only three for it?”

“It isn't enough”—Geoffrey continued on perfectly well where Jonathan would have liked to interrupt with dispute—“Hell’s teeth… It's _not_ enough when I can't even give my name to you. And if I could by law… just the pennyless, queer son of murdered sheep farmers when it comes down to it. _Persona non grata.”_

Jonathan latched his hands around Geoffrey’s arms. “Don’t.”

“No, I will. Priwen doesn’t exist to the everyday man. Certainly not to families distinguished and reputable as yours. To those who know us… they think us a mob of blackguards and petty thieves. I've not been oblivious to it. My name will only pass through the rank and file of Priwen and by all persons who come after me to fill a position I held dear. Or they may strike it from Priwen's history, maybe change facts more scandalous. It will perhaps appear in sordid texts handed off between members of the Stole, even. But what ‘ave I to offer a man like you really?”

“You aren't my Jack Saul, nor any piece of _trade_ I'm hoping to eventually beg off with enough money. I'm not ashamed of you. I've never been. Did I have my own private courtship with loneliness before you came to be my remedy? Yes. Yes, I was terribly lonely. And I think it’s been clear for a time that that’s part of why I wanted you so badly. But my God, I love you now and I don't care for the deeper reason. I only accept it as fact because I feel it each night I wake, and it grows, consumes me. Gladly, I let it! I love you, not by design nor curse. I love you deliberately. Of my own free will. If it's not the same for you… well, I suppose I'm able to live with that.”

Geoffrey surprised Jonathan with a quick, chaste kiss. “Let me have _my_ own will. You are my sire, but not my god. You were the hand of Fate, this is true, and I will not bite that which continually sustains me. Please, let me decide to walk whichever path you reveal; do not condemn me if I choose another way. That's all I ask. I've never realised until now, how much of my life was chosen for me.”

“Agreed, you bloody-minded bastard.” Head swimming, Jonathan dipped down to kiss Geoffrey’s shoulder, his chest—the tiny scar from the crucifix pendant Jonathan knew he still held onto like a childhood memento. Jonathan dropped to his knees.

“I love you,” Geoffrey breathed. He clutched Jonathan’s shoulder and the back of his head while Jonathan hugged him ‘round the waist. He didn’t push nor goad Jonathan, only held him and sighed pleasantly when Jonathan’s fingernails marked raised trails up the small of his back, his arse, and thighs.

With a kiss, Jonathan made a claim on Geoffrey’s newest scars. This form of dual worship and apology sent Geoffrey’s mind into a nervous wave of chattering vibrations, sharp like the metallic rap of typewriter keys—Jonathan could not parse the line of these emotions nor thread them back together into an approximation of sense. This sort of touch, it made Geoffrey uncomfortable, that much was undeniable.

Jonathan inspected the swathe of newly healed, pink scar tissue taking up much of the left side of Geoffrey’s abdomen. It was smooth, at times papery, and tender-soft beneath his fingers, an indented border to where hair still grew and spread across his stomach, alongside his navel. He reached up to where one of Geoffrey’s ribs had been previously exposed, watching Geoffrey’s face for response. Jonathan found not an ounce of ugliness about him—by din of survival, he regarded him as utterly remarkable.

“I can feel it just fine.” Geoffrey pressed his own fingers to a couple spots on his side as if to say, _See? Doesn’t hurt. I’m alive and perfectly fit._

Jonathan kissed him there, let his mouth count the differences. It was all strangely the same. He moved on, dragging his nose into the cushion of curls above the root of Geoffrey’s cock, opened his jaw to lick once at the hardness tempting him further down. Geoffrey’s scent was scant yet still harsh and sweet because Jonathan _knew_ him, knew what to look for. Their bodies were but vessels for the most basic of needs; systems and organs altered or made inert, yet they were still innately human, if only in shape and silhouette. Jonathan refused to believe otherwise, even if his scientific mind told him the opposite most days.

On a whim, Jonathan sank his teeth into Geoffrey directly next to the large scar, fangs easily breaking through the pliant bit of fat along his belly; watched as it caused a line of blood to trail down towards more rigid tissue. Jonathan tried in vain to stop the quiet groan he let slip before it rumbled from his throat. He sounded half-wounded himself, and in an instant, there was a placating hand combing through his hair to soothe the imagined hurt. Jonathan leant into the cradle of Geoffrey's palm, at his mercy if he should finally decide to pull or shove—it was always that way. For now, he remained in his affectionate touches, though Jonathan could sense the tension in Geoffrey like a tripwire.

Allowing the dripping of blood to spend like hourglass sand, Jonathan enjoyed the ache in his knees against the floor, the physical pain simultaneously being an indirect reward for patience and a deserved punishment for being so blind, yet again, to the sum of Geoffrey's needs. He watched the blood slow and halt through dark, wiry hair. Casually, Jonathan pressed his thumb along one of the two small wounds he'd created. More blood seeped, adding to the pace of gravity, this draw slithering neatly red down to the length of Geoffrey's prick, down and down the surface smoothed and hardened by a more hidden pump of blood. Jonathan ultimately grew too impatient before he could observe two fluids mix; he'd taste both on his tongue anyway, both familiar to his palate.

Slowly, he brought his mouth over the tip of Geoffrey's cock, forced his hands to remain clenched on his own thighs, letting Geoffrey be the one to lift his thickness to glide across Jonathan's tongue in short thrusts; a play at lovemaking—their sort, ever indulging in the paired sin they were. Welcoming it. They could make the aberrant an art form at this point.

In all Jonathan’s years, he never thought he’d come to enjoy it all so much, or find someone that did not make him loathe who he was in heart. By the time he was forty, he all but accepted the fact that he’d go on towards the rest of his life in a solitary way. His mortal demise brought about more surprises than he certainly could have predicted.

Above him, Geoffrey moaned obscenities, fingers still petting absently at Jonathan’s hair. Jonathan pulled off after sucking him for a few more leisurely passes and gently commanded him to lie on the bed. That intriguing split of Geoffrey’s coppery blood and the sharp-yet-sapid weeping of his cock remained on Jonathan’s taste buds. He licked the inside of his bottom lip, chasing remnant flavour.

Geoffrey took a second or two to seemingly collect his composure before moving back onto the bed, relaxing himself against the pillows. Jonathan climbed after him, not a fretful thought put to his shoes being on the old, ratty mattress. He hovered over Geoffrey on hands and knees, then gripped his throat softly, moved his hand upwards until he could slip two fingers along the seam of Geoffrey’s lips. Geoffrey edged his teeth over Jonathan’s knuckles all while holding his gaze with an ardent look that put a match to Jonathan’s lust. Jonathan pressed his clothed groin down against Geoffrey’s, just a slow, rolling increase in pressure. Abruptly, his fingers were forcibly removed from Geoffrey’s mouth, a painful grip ‘round his wrist as Geoffrey yanked him down into a vicious kiss. He whispered the single syllable of Jonathan’s truncated name, only uttered by Geoffrey’s mouth, only allowed by his.

Jonathan reached down to find Geoffrey’s cock, wet and tacky with saliva and pre-ejaculate. He slinked down Geoffrey’s body, pouring forth kiss after kiss to express the minor regret for his partial disentanglement. Geoffrey didn’t seem to much mind once Jonathan was between his legs again, arms hugging the spread of his thighs, tongue and lips working over his balls and back up his shaft to swallow him whole once more. He drank in Geoffrey’s release when it came, humming his enjoyment for the lovely bitterness that coated the back of his throat in the thrum of three heartbeats. But Geoffrey only moaned once, long and suffering-deep. In the shade of his orgasm, Geoffrey coaxed Jonathan upwards with fumbling fingers at his jaw and cheek, and a more gentle kiss greeted Jonathan than before. They savoured one another, heedless to the rush and rise they felt crescendo just a minute ago.

Everything slowed down, like the dripping of blood over skin.

“Fair play,” Geoffrey whispered, smiling.

“You’re quite lucky we’re both immortals, you know,” Jonathan retorted. “You’ve made me insatiable.”

They ended up twined and vine-limbed, Jonathan having shucked his clothes to his underthings, enough to feel the bloom of warmth from Geoffrey’s bare skin. Awake they lay there close, that death slumber not yet strongly calling to them for now. One of Geoffrey’s fingers zagged a pattern through the line of buttons over Jonathan’s chest.

“Why did you start calling me 'Jon?'” Even his late family usually took to calling him _Jonny._ It pleased him though, as much as any other endearment could.

At Jonathan’s errant question, coming from nothing more than a harmless curiosity, really, Geoffrey’s hand stopped moving as if he’d been doing something inappropriate. He shifted his head further onto Jonathan’s chest. “Because you were my _friend,”_ he said with equal parts shame and disgust, although their collusion had long extended far beyond the breaches of camaraderie, smudged hard edges of black and white into their very own muddled hue. Comrades, yes, and so much more. Jonathan thought then of his much beloved, worn book of Whitman poems Mary had gifted him before he was sent off to France.

“It’s also quicker than saying ‘Jonathan,’” Geoffrey added dryly.

Jonathan rolled him onto his side, feeling a giddy drunkenness, and brought his hand to Geoffrey’s stubbled cheek, running his thumb across his lower lip. Jonathan spoke smoothly:

“If you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,  
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,  
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;  
For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is best,  
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.”

Geoffrey stared back at him, apparently gobsmacked.

“Poetry,” Jonathan stated, shifting onto his back again. He was a bit rankled by Geoffrey’s non-reaction. “By an American, supposedly someone who was, as we are.”

“As in... a leech?”

“As in another like _Wilde.”_ Jonathan tapped the side of his nose with his finger.

Scoffing, Geoffrey smiled and made to cling his body against Jonathan’s side like soft moss again. “You’re far too romantic a git for me, I think.”

“Is it really so bad? Loving? Being—loved?"

“They almost had me, I did not know what they'd do to _you.”_ Nervous ticks presented themselves in Geoffrey busied hands about his mouth and neck as if he was trying to suffocate words he wasn't ready to let loose. “What if I was the bait? I know now that wasn't the case, but what if I had been? I could not take the chance. I didn’t want to kill them, but… fucking impressionable bastards…”

“You knew then, how I felt in that instance after all. Witnessing the possibility of you dying become a near reality.”

Geoffrey parried with an awful hypothetical. “Aye, and the Brotherhood of Saint-Paul's Stole, they could do the same: you for me.”

“I understand your importance to this iteration of Priwen, Geoffrey, or at least, I try to. However, I don't think the Brotherhood would exact some sort of vengeance after all these years in the manner of a jealous, former lover. Simply put, decades upon decades have passed since Kendal Stone left to start Priwen.”

“Are you very used to murderous ex-lovers?”

Jonathan let out a chortle. “In my line of work, the motive of inflicted injury or death doesn't hold much surprise after a while. My point is, I believe that is all water under a very old bridge by now, and it would have made more sense for the Brotherhood to eliminate Priwen, and you, before”—Jonathan swallowed, peering down at Geoffrey—“before your turning, if they found your leadership such a great threat. I’d of course reckon, that you are a far more formidable one now.”

“And if it isn't, as you say, water under the bridge?”

“Don't let on you can read their thoughts.” It was a small gamble for confirmation, bringing this out into the open, and Geoffrey wasn’t shy in showing disbelief over Jonathan having correctly guessed at the newer, unrevealed ability. “They’ve other Ekons in their employ. I trust you to give me fair warning if something seems amiss.”

“You sound as if you intend me to be a spy.”

“I think you’ve many untapped talents, Geoffrey. A precaution is all.”

Luck was on their side the following day. In the early morning hours, clouds had crept across the sky, turning it a dismal slate blue. They dozed for a handful of hours until Jonathan decided it was time to haul themselves out of bed and prepare for their journey back to London. Considering his British blood, Jonathan figured Dublin would be glad to be rid of him, metaphorically giving him a kick as he'd soon board a ferry. If only they knew he was something much more sinister than a potential Auxie in disguise. To some degree, Geoffrey seemed calmer, maybe in knowing he'd be putting Ireland behind him for the time being, though his emotions swam with plenty of regret; he let Jonathan in on them fully. Despite his thinning connection to this island he'd called home as a boy, Geoffrey saw himself as treasonous and undeserving of a “life” with Jonathan.

Before noon, under the shelter of a hackney roof, they watched as the city of Dublin passed by, and the flinty sky begot a torrent of intermittent showers. The full clouds, fat with rain, did not allow a single sliver of sunlight to squeeze through. Ultimately, the inclement weather still necessitated that purchase of two umbrellas, but it gave Jonathan and Geoffrey the ability to quietly meld with other ferry passengers also looking to keep dry. What’s more, it allowed perfect cover for Jonathan to steal a kiss out on the dark, susurrating pulse of the Irish Sea, holding just as many mysteries as their imminent future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Geoffrey was singing the 1913 traditional Irish (though English-written) song, “Danny Boy,” with slightly altered lyrics—besides injecting Jonathan’s name in there, the sap. Call it cliché, but for so long, I had this unsettling imagery of him in my head, humming or singing while covered in blood, surrounded by corpses, and felt the meaning(s) behind that song in particular would be fitting for Geoffrey’s state of mind in Ireland then.
> 
> The poetry Jonathan recites is a snippet from Walt Whitman’s “Calamus” collection of poems, specifically “Whoever You are Now Holding Me in Hand.” These preceding lines are what prompted Jonathan to speak the poem aloud:  
>  _Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of  
>  the sea, or some quiet island,  
> Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,  
> With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new  
> husband's kiss,  
> For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade._
> 
> I've an exceptionally self-indulgent, weird "threequel" started, but I won't be able to finish that for at least a few months due to my extremely full plate, but I'm very excited about it.  
> As always, endless thank-you's go out to readers old and new, and those of you who've stuck around since I started writing for this fandom via one little drabble. You've no idea how much I appreciate you.  
> Special, indebted thanks to my two inspirational muses: Chase & stillswashere♡♡♡

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I'm aware I don't write what everyone wants to see in this fandom, but if you stuck around and enjoyed, thank you a million times over♥ 
> 
> This "story" likely won't be more than two or three chapters at most.
> 
> Title from a line in Killing Joke's song, "Love Like Blood."
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr @thefire-in-the-nightsky & Twitter @oh_amatus!


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